Moments of Reflections
by Bob Bobbing
Summary: The Scoobies get themselves into deep trouble on a rainy day in Sunnydale and find out all the work may have had unknow consequences


Setting: Early Season 4  
  
Disclaimer  
  
I own nothing but the story. If you already know it, I don't own it but Mutant Enemy and Fox do yada yada yada…  
  
Reviews appreciated please!  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
Moments of Reflections  
  
The rain continued to beat hard against the window. Buffy stared glumly out, propping her head on her hand.   
  
"Giles, is this what it's like in England?" bored, she pondered.  
  
"Hmm. What? Yes, no. We don't have hurricanes in England. Well nearly never," a pacing Giles stopped and looked up from his book. "Anyway, a bit of rain and a few gusts of wind hardly make a hurricane," he added squinting out at the storm.  
  
"What' ya doing?" Buffy ignored.  
  
"Yeah, big book man, still with the research. It's a hurricane, even the undead can't argue with the forces of nature!" Xander postulated.  
  
"Damm right!" Willow smiled up from her book on the couch.  
  
"I think you'll find that the forces of evil don't watch the weather forecast," Giles pontificated.  
  
"So what' ya working on. Is the hurricane yet another sign of am impeding apocalypse?" Buffy asked.  
  
"Don't you think that evil would have learnt to not to go apocalypsizing in this one horse town by now?" Xander wondered.  
  
"Actually, I'm reading about the giant mirror…" Giles trailed off embarrassed, holding up Astronomy Now.  
  
"Oh, the one they're putting up in the desert!" Xander enthused to the wide eyed amazement of the others. "What? I have hidden interests," Xander explained to the sceptical room.  
  
"Giant mirrors? Do I have to slay some giant beauty queens now?" Buffy inattentively asked.  
  
"Not since Cordellia went to L.A. anyway," Xander quipped, absently flicking through one of Giles' weighty tomes. "Oh, the Generialla Order. Giles, who are they?" he asked attracted by the glossy pictures.  
  
"Oh, I think they were one of those suicide cults in the middle ages," Giles answered dismissively as if the information was well known.  
  
"And what does that mean?" Xander offered up the book fingering the offending passage. Giles glanced at it and summarised.  
  
"Something about the start of one thousand years of torment, brought on with a rainy plague blown in from the sea. And then something about where they will rise again or something…at the place of eternal fire."  
  
"Hey," Xander jumped up, "1000 years, millennium, rain, hurricane and fire, boca del'ferno. Anyone else worried?"  
  
"No, no," Giles looked pained at Xander's enthusiasm, "Boca del'Inferno means mouth of hell not fire. Probably means Tierra del Fuego in South America if anywhere." Giles lifted the offending book away from Xander and went to put it back on the shelf. As he did he checked the spine information and stopped cold.   
  
"Unless… this is a sixteenth century English translation from the original…" Giles jumped up startling everyone, "and they would… Oh God!"  
  
"What's the what and how do we stop it?" Buffy asked, her interest piqued. Giles was now intently studying the passage.   
  
"Oh good. Research. Me and my big mouth," Xander down beat.  
  
"Research? Finally!" smiled Willow, uncurling from the couch.  
  
"Ok then? So where are they, tweed man?" asked an amused if slightly inconvenienced Buffy.  
  
"Well… the text...," Giles spluttered, still carefully looking around the echoing, vast, rock scared cavern.  
  
"Come on. I got wet in that rain and look what the wind did to my hair," Buffy pouted, "so I'm just gonna have to kick some undead butt!"  
  
"You hair is of course, the primary concern when we are dealing with the impending destruction of the Earth," Giles smiled back with friendly sarcasm.   
  
"So, let me get this straight," Xander wandered lazily past munching on an apple, "some vampire cult, that has been extinct is coming here to regroup and then they'll go and open the Hellmouth?"  
  
"Well, yes but they don't want to end the earth, just make it perpetual night, and they need the blood of the slayer and the Hellmouth for that," expositioned Willow.  
  
"Ok, but then where are they?" Xander asked.  
  
"We are here!" a voice boomed round the cavern, "kind of you to bring snacks for us, Slayer." A small vampire stepped out from behind a boulder.   
  
"Kinda small aren't you," Xander observed before he could stop himself.  
  
"Silence human! You and your kind will tremble before the brothers and sisters of the Order of Generialla when the day becomes night."  
  
"Big on the drama aren't ya?" Buffy observed pulling out a stake from her jacket pocket.   
  
"Don't you think you should have brought friends to the party?" Xander wondered. At that another six vampires, ornately dressed, stepped into view. "Ok, I've got to be careful what I wish for, don't I?" Xander mused.  
  
"Still, hardly the greatest of apocalyptic cults we've faced?" Willow questioned.  
  
"Well, maybe not but they still aren't as extinct as my books said?" Giles was every so slightly unnerved at having been proved wrong on the cult's existence.  
  
"Still, we can take them, right Buffy?" Willow now shared Giles' unease at the entry of unknown factors to the fight.  
  
"Sure, six ickle vamps. We can do these and have time to get to the Bronze before opening," Buffy breezed.  
  
"Once we were few, you are correct but extinct, pah!" the lead vampire spat on the floor, "Even if we were one, we were not extinct. I recovered our sacred scrolls and maintained our traditions…"  
  
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, history never was my thing," Buffy cut him off but with an intensity that started all the scoobies the vampire continued.  
  
"I knew enough to observe as the power play was staged out above me. Ensconced in this cave I could watch and feed off adventurous humans…"   
  
"Gross!" a still unworried Xander spat out.  
  
"I watched as the Mayor arrived and Balthazar and they battled for supremacy. I watched as the Master attempted to open the Hellmouth. I saw you arrive and one by one I saw you defeat them, the Master and the order of Aurelius, Angelus, the acolytes of Balthazar, the Mayor. You destroyed them all and drove them from the city, so that like me, centuries before them, they fled to these caves for sanctuary. Where once we were weak, you gave the night walkers of Sunnydale no option but to join me. You, Slayer, made the Order of Generialla strong again!" the vampire finished on a crescendo and right on cue, from all sides, the cave began to fill with vampires. All sizes and shapes dressed in all periods of clothing. Hundreds, then thousands of the creatures, their killing faces displaying a look of wonderment at the final truth of their leader's words, filled the cavern, surrounding the astonished Scoobies. Behind the lead vampire, who had now been covered in an ornate cloak, stood two vampires holding a banner. The banner contained intricate symbols and what Buffy presumed was ancient writing but her jaw dropped at the design in the middle of the fabric. It was her face. Buffy heard the others gasp in horror behind her. She scanned the mass of vampires. Every now and then Buffy was able to pick out a demon face that she recognised as a previous follower of the Master ,or one of the Mayor's hench-vampires. Xander whispered his recognition of the same.  
  
"Giles, a plan would be good right about now?" Buffy asked.  
  
"Well…" Giles had no answer.  
  
"Willow! Anything in your magic box of tricks?" Buffy asked the witch.  
  
"Um, way out of my league," Willow gulped and then with characteristic politeness added, "Sorry."  
  
"Like the men of Athens we fight to the death then," Xander dramatised.  
  
"The Spartans at Thermopylae would probably be the analogy you're looking for" commented Giles.  
  
"I wish Oz was here!" Willow sighed.  
  
"You want Oz to die?" Xander, ever the joker, quipped. Despite the situation or perhaps because of it Buffy and Willow chuckled out loud.  
  
"Xander! That is hardly appropriate," reprimanded Giles, though he had a smirk on his face too.  
  
"Prepare to die!" announced the Leader with a flourish.  
  
"Get on with it!" humoured an unduly relaxed, accepting Buffy. The mass of vampires began closing in. The Scoobies huddled together stakes out but each of them closed their eyes in the face of their impending death. Then a scream. And another. Buffy looked up. Inexplicably a number of vampires burst into flames. Then again, more vampires combusted. The others looked around in confusion. Buffy could see bursts of sunlight dancing into the chamber and destroying those undead in its path. Then to all the Scoobies amazement a sustained burst of light swept through the cave from left to right obliterating all the vampires present. The scoobies could feel its intense warmth as it passed over them. And then it was gone leaving them open-mouthed, alone and ankle deep in vampire dust.  
  
Still shaken Buffy, Xander and Willow nibbled on pizza as Giles explained.  
  
"A cable broke as they raised the telescope mirror. It would appear that it directed an intense, hot beam of sunlight into the cave destroying all the vampires."  
  
"Lucky for us," Willow concluded with a slight smile.  
  
"I knew astronomy was cool!" emphasised a satisfied, relieved Xander. 


End file.
